You don’t know when you stopped breathing, and you don’t remember when your heart gave out, but the screams still echo inside your head like a siren that never stops. They’re louder at night, clawing at your skull when the world goes quiet, leaving you restless, haunted, and hollow. You don’t remember the music or the vows or the taste of the cake, but you remember the pain—sharp and violent—splitting you open like a page in a ruined book.

It was supposed to be the best day of your life. Your wedding day. You were marrying Johnathan. The man who once looked at you like you were the center of the universe. The man you trusted enough to stand beside in front of everyone you loved. The man who let you walk down the aisle in that white dress, glowing with hope, never knowing you'd leave it soaked in blood.

You remember the flash of the bullet, how clean it was, how expertly it tore through your chest like it had always been meant to find you. You remember falling, your dress drenched in red, and you remember the cold shock when you looked around and realized no one was coming. Not Johnathan. Not your Aurora. Not your parents or your friends or the people who toasted to your future just an hour earlier.

They didn’t move. They didn’t scream your name. They didn’t even look afraid. It was like they had already made peace with your death. It felt like they wanted it—like they had been waiting for it—and that truth cut deeper than the bullet ever could.

You should have died. Maybe you would have, if someone hadn’t called for help, though you never found out who. You spent months in a coma and even more locked in a hospital bed, stitched back together with silence and abandonment. No visits. No flowers. No familiar voices. And when you finally opened your eyes and asked for them, the nurses told you no one had come.

When they discharged you, there was no one waiting. No arms to hold you. No home to return to. You booked the cheapest hotel you could find and started over from nothing, working jobs that drained you, hiding the pain in your chest, pretending the scar didn’t burn every time you breathed too deep.

You dragged yourself back to life with your nails and your rage, and every step forward felt like bleeding all over again.

And today, you thought maybe—just maybe—you had finally made it out.

You got the job. A position in a company so big it looked like it scraped the sky. When you stepped into the elevator and watched the floors rise, your heart beat with something almost like hope. You followed the signs to reception with your shoulders straight, thinking this was your moment, this was your beginning.

But everything inside you stopped the second you saw them.

Johnathan and Aurora. Standing side by side. Perfectly composed. Perfectly at ease. Like they belonged here and always had. He wore that expensive suit he used to save for special occasions, and his hand rested gently on her stomach in a way that made your blood run cold.

She was pregnant.

Her fingers wore wedding rings that weren’t there the last time you saw her. And the way they looked at each other—so full of love and hunger and quiet, shared understanding—made you feel like you were watching a life you were never meant to be part of.

You stood there frozen, choking on air that refused to enter your lungs, and in that moment, the pain in your chest roared back to life. Not from the bullet.

From something worse.

Because they didn’t just replace you.

They erased you.

And all you could think, standing there in that cold, shining hallway full of glass and lies, was that maybe you should have died in that dress. Maybe it would’ve been easier than standing here now, watching them live the life they built from the pieces they tore out of you.